Gaddafi, Go! No seriously!

Qaddafi, Gaddafi, Kaddafi whatever his name is... I think its time for this dude whos been pulling a Hugh Hefner - Arab style since the summer of 69' to be shown the door after his neighbors. Forty whoop di frikkin' two years! how could his people have left anyone warm the bench for so long let alone a Bedouin tent wearing badass like him? His rule seems like a catalog of disasters: Financing the Munich massacre in 1972, Being in control of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing and later the Lockerbie Bombing in 1988. Surely, he deserved the "mad dog of the middle east" title that Reagan gave him. As of Friday, 25th Feb 2011, rebels are in control of most of Libya with the exception of three cities including its capital, Tripoli. It is great to see that people are taking a stand: diplomats are distancing themselves, military and police personnel are defecting and even cabinet members are resigning and urging their colleagues to do the same. I also read that a few blocks away from where I live in DC, Libyan protesters gathered, flying flags from the previous monarchy.

I recently had lunch with a Zimbabwean gentleman who gave me an insight into what is happening in Mugabe's backyard: A man he knew who wanted to buy bread for lunch to feed his kids, finds out that a pound of bread costs Z$10 million, (yes you read that right) and puts the bills in a wheel barrel and reaches the bakery only to find out that the rates had increased two fold since the past hour! - the time it took for him to reach the baker. He is forced to sell his wheel barrel to make good the difference. Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe kicked off after the grand ol' fart decided to repudiate IMF debts and confiscate white owned farms in the early 2000s

News sources are saying that what happened in Egypt and Tunisia is a harbinger of what is to come in Libya. I sure do hope that they are right. A colleague and a good friend who happens to be Egyptian reached for his throat and stuck his tongue out when I asked him how life was under Mubarak's rule that was characterized by a 20 year continuous emergency. Interestingly he had words of praise for Anwar al-Sadat. At the same time, one has to appreciate that Mubarak policies were geared at cracking down on terrorism and worked towards stable relations with Israel.

But a seemingly endless totalitarian rule abridging people's rights in the guise of an emergency or otherwise should not, at least on paper, work forever. A Congolese taxi driver I rode with pointed out that that's how Africa's political structure has always been. "Tribes elected its strongest and wisest as its chiefs like how prides choose its strongest lion to lead it. What really has corrupted Africa was the European imperialists who foisted their democratic ideals on people who are inherently different."